Page 75 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

UMBERTO ECO

Travels In Hyperreality (1990). The Limits of Interpretation (1990). Foucault’s in the Middle Ages (1988). Leonardo Cremonini: Paintings and Watercolors
Pendulum (1989). On the Medieval Theory of Signs (1989). The Aesthetics of 1976-1986 (1987). Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984). The Sign
Chaomos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce (1989). The Open Work (1989). The of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce (1984). Postscript to The Name of the Rose
Bomb and the General (1989). The Three Astronauts (1989). Meaning and Mental (1983). The Name of the Rose (1983). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in
Representations (1988). The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (1988). Art and Beauty the Semiotics of Text (1979). The Theory of Semiotics (1976)

important social change. I was talking with Professor Prodi [note: Romano Prodi OK, at this point it is obvious that even there, there is a filter which establishes
is professor of economics at the University of Bologna, and prospective prime- the links. In this sense it will be very difficult to make a philosophical hypertext,
ministerial candidate for a coalition of centre-left moderates in the next Italian because you will have to decide if you will link the notion of passion in Descartes
general election] and I told him that the only possibility that you have to make a with the notion of passion in Aristotle, which are two different notions...
real campaign, is to realize in every city a group, a club, a circle. One of the real “Yes, completely different.”
forces in the inventions of Berlusconi was not only to use television for political For Aristotle it is simply a cognitive event, and for Descartes, and for the
propaganda. He, having a big industrial organisation, established clubs everywhere. 17th century passion has to do with feeling, sentiment etcetera. But in the case
This was people that were proud to wear the badge and to identify themselves as of our Encyclomedia, which was based on historical data, you have a certain
belonging to a particular group. I saw them in the village where I have my country guarantee. The name of a city is linked to other cities. The name of a given person
house. It was artificial. It was all set up in two months, so it wasn’t enough to links with persons which had connections with them. And you also can establish
establish a really profound sense of belonging to a community. But it was an idea. unforeseen links...
So I told Prodi that he should do the same. And one way to do that is to use “The users can make their own links?”
Internet. Because through Internet you can reach, say, two persons in every city, Yes, because you have, let’s say, so-called books and files. There’s for
giving them materials, documents. People will be encouraged to xerox all these instance a book on Descartes, and obviously in the book on Descartes you will
materials and to establish local groups, networks. So it is a sort of collaboration certainly mention, let’s say Pascal, or Gallileo. There are some immediate links,
between virtual and... because Gallileo and Pascal are highlighted, and so you can immediately identify
“Real communities?...” the possibility of there being links there. There is no pre-established link between
...and real communities. If we succeed in doing that then Internet will be an Descartes and Caravaggio.
enormous element or factor of social change. If it remains only virtual it could lead Why? Because they had nothing in common except he fact that they lived
some people to pure onanistic solitude. In this sense, most of the hackers are sick in the same century. But I wanted to solve, or to answer this question: “Was it
persons, because they sit passive. They play and intrude into the computers of the possible that Descartes met Caravaggio?” Descartes travelled pretty much. So, I
banks or the Pentagon, because it is the only way to feel alive. have a function that allows me to ask about Descartes AND/OR Caravaggio, and I
“You have just released a new hypertext encyclopaedia. In an article you found I had the possibility of detecting that that meeting was impossible, because
published recently in the local paper in Bologna, La Republicca, you write that this Caravaggio died when Descartes was 14. So, I established my own links.
work will contain more information than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There you “OK, I see. You are able to check that kind of thing then. I saw a CD-ROM
also wrote that the main advantage of your Encyclomedia is its non-linear retrieval recently published by Multimedia World that was quite interesting. It was a kind of
and cross-referencing system. I always wonder about the effectiveness of hypertext CD-ROM hypertext version of the magazine. But it also had - you know the World
systems in general, because someone has to make the links. So even though you Wide Web - where you make a server and you put pages on it and create links to
call it non-linear retrieval, or whatever, it is all decided by somebody in advance?” other places from these pages?”
Well, first of all: if you are able tomorrow to invent a hypertext in which every Eco nods.
idea and every word, every adjective, every article can be linked with everything.
(to be continued in the next number)
WORLD of ART 75